


Distractions

by Bienmoreau



Category: All For The Game - Nora Sakavic
Genre: Jealous Jean Moreau, Other, but like he doesn’t really get why.. and Jere isn’t making it any easier for him
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-04
Updated: 2016-10-04
Packaged: 2020-08-23 21:54:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,171
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20235691
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bienmoreau/pseuds/Bienmoreau
Summary: Anonymous asked: what are your thoughts on jean getting jealous before he and jeremy are together, bc sometimes jeremy will go on dates and come home with hickeys, looking all giggly and happy and jean is jealous because he wants to be the one giving jeremy hickeys and making him all giggly like that





	Distractions

The thing about Jeremy Knox is that people love him, they didn’t always and of course not everyone does, but by the time he starts his last year at USC he has quite the fan base. He’s respected as captain and seen as a leader but he’s also made a name for himself as easy company, the point is the boy gets asked out a LOT and he pretty much always says yes. As he explained to Alvarez in their 2nd year, _why not, he’s an optimistic fellow and you never know it could be amazing. _Of course Alvarez was headfirst down the rabbit hole in her crush on the new freshman Goalie at that point and so did not get where Jeremy was coming from. 

Everyone knows Jeremy Knox is good fun and goes on a lot of dates, the thing you get to know about him after a little while though is that he never goes home with them.

Of course the addition of Jean Moreau to the Trojans ranks was bound to shake things up, and no one was expecting it to be easy. For the whole of that first semester Jeremy throws his all in to tackling this new challenge and well, concessions have to be made. Kevin had warned him about the Raven mentality and that it was important that Jean wasn’t left on his own for too long and Jeremy tried.

By Christmas Jeremy is exhausted, run ragged and thanking any saints out there that as the new term rolls in and Jean returns from his Christmas with Renee, he seems to have finally settled, at least enough to say yes when Laila asks him to come study and eat dinner in her and Alvarez’s room one night.

It’s not that Jeremy minded not going out but he’s also definitely not going to get in the way of Jean bonding with the other team members. So as Jean slowly lets Laila past some of his walls and willingly spends more time with her, Jeremy steps back slightly, and the next time he’s approached by someone hoping for the chance at a date he lets himself say yes.

* * *

Jeremy knows he probably should have called it a night a little sooner than he did but this was the first time he’d been truly able to let loose since the summer and he was feeling a little reckless. Since coming back from Christmas there had been a marked improvement in Jeans attitude. Of course it wasn’t perfect, gods know that Jean is probably never going to be done healing from his past, but he’s stopped punching people and actually goes for lunch, _LUNCH!_ with Laila every Wednesday now, and damn it if Jeremy isn’t proud of them all. So sure, _maybe _he should have held back a little he admits to himself as he sways into the wall for the 5th time and nearly drops his keys, again, but who can blame him really? It had been so long since he was able to just go out and have fun, to not be keeping half an eye and 90% of his mind on monitoring how Jean was doing. Jean was with Laila. Jean was fine. The girls know what to do and would make sure he got back to their dorm- _it’s like two doors down! I’SSSS FIIIINNEE- _Jeremy explains animatedly to himself as soon as the worry trickles back into his mind.

He’s aware that Jean will most likely be asleep and he has to be quiet and he does try, but by the time he gets the door open he’s relapsed into quiet giggles and _damn it’s been a while since he got tipsy like this. _He eases the door shut and beams at the soft click of the lock as he spins on his heel and, stops dead.  
  


* * *

  
  
Jean turns from where he’s been sitting at his desk, papers scattered as if he’d been casting them aside one by one and raises his eyebrows at Jeremy’s expression. The mix of merriment and surprise eases into his all too familiar grin that only serves to highlight the line of bruises running from the corner of his toothy smile, along his jaw and down his neck were they seem to gather around is left clavicle, and it makes Jean scowl.

Jeremy sighs, walking into the room so he can drop his keys on the coffee table “Heya Jean, I thought you would have gone to bed by now.” Jean doesn’t say anything, just watches Jeremy shrug off his jacket and slump onto the sofa, that same happy grin gracing his lips. Jean swears quietly and turns back to his book. It’s not that he cares about how Jeremy spends his time, it’s not about the marks covering his tanned skin, it’s not even about the contented sigh or the gods damned giggling. At least that’s what Jean tells himself as he roughly restacks the loose sheets of paper.

_So what is it about Moreau? _He hates that voice, the one that sounds a little bit like Kevin, and little bit like Jeremy and mostly like the version of himself that died 10 years ago in the darkness of hell. Jean stills and looks down and his hands, they’re not so ghostly pale anymore and there’re even a few freckles scattered across his crooked bones, like flecks of paint on canvas.  
_So what is it Moreau? _He clenches his jaw and glances over to where Jeremy is using his phone to check the marks on his neck, giggling and blushing as he finds more and more of them._  
What is IT? _

It is, that as much as this place and these people are shock to his system and they can never understand what he’s been through, and as much as he snaps and pulls back and is still, _always still_, fighting, he doesn’t hate them. He doesn’t understand them but he knows they’re not bad people and in the 5 months he’s been with them they still haven’t stopped trying.  
It’s that the stupidly fucking cheerful ray of sunshine has been losing his goddamn glow over the weeks and Jean has only noticed it now because it’s come back in near full force. And it’s such a shift from the man Jean woke up to that morning and it’s all because of one night away from him.

It’s because even when it’s wearing him into the ground and he’s already dealing with the stress of his final year, Jeremy gets up every day and tries to help him. It’s because Jean is only just realising how much is being done for him and how little he deserves any of it.

Sleep doesn’t come easy that night, not after Jeremy huffs and pulls himself off the sofa to go shower and Jean has to try and not follow the line of bruises down Jeremy’s chest when he walks into their room in only his towel. Jean lies awake for a long time listening to Jeremy’s breaths across the room and when he finally does sleep he has to answer to a giggling smiling Jeremy asking him “What is it Jean? How can I help?” and in his sleep Jean can’t force himself to glare and tell Jeremy to ‘fuck off’, in his sleep he is honest and hears himself say “Je ne sais pas ce que… désolé”  
  


* * *

After that night Jeremy starts to go on dates more frequently, he knows that Laila will happily spend the evening keeping Jean company and while Jean seems to pull back a little every time Jeremy comes home in the small hours to find Jean still awake, he’s showing enough progress the rest of the time that Jeremy’s not too worried. It’s great to be able to blow off steam again and it’s giving Jeremy the energy boost he needs to tackle the growing pressures of his impending graduation.

* * *

  
  
Jean looks up from the sketch book in his lap as Jeremy closes the door before turning to smile at him, his face flushed and his hair looking like a birds nest “You know you don’t have to wait up for me right?” He jokes as he makes his way to the kitchenette for a glass of water. Jean watches him in silence from across the room, the same impenetrable look on his face as always. “I’m sorry if me going out is keeping you up. I can ask one of the Liam’s to crash on the sofa next time if that’ll help.”

The scowl that crosses Jeans face at that is momentary but heartfelt and before Jeremy can see it he is shaking his head and turning away, “I don’t need a babysitter for when you go out on all your dates Knox.” He doesn’t mean to sound as harsh as he does but it’s been a long day, a long week, and Jeremy had been chattering about his upcoming date with one of the seniors on the basketball team at every chance he got.

Jeremy’s smile falters a little at that and he unzips his jacket as his approaches the sofa, “Jean?” his voice is soft, _always so goddamn soft when he’s worried_, Jean can’t stand it, he glares at Jeremy only for his eyes to immediately focus on the smattering of purpling marks on Jeremy’s neck,  
“Forget it Knox. Do what you like, why would I care.” He pushes himself to his feet and stalks into the bedroom.

It’s not really until Jeremy graduates that Jean starts to realise what had been eating at him for the better part of the last half a year, when he realises that he has no idea what Jeremy’s doing now that he’s not in the dorms. That he could be coming home at any hour of the night covered in other people’s marks, or not coming home at all some nights, or bringing his dates home with him-  
It pisses Jean off and the fact that it pisses him off pisses him off even more, it’s stupid and pointless and what does it matter to him either way? He justifies it to himself that it’s just that he’d gotten used to Jeremy being involved in his life and vice versa simply due to circumstance and that it’s just him adjusting to yet another change.

But more and more he would hear that damned voice in his head “_That’s not quite it though is it. So what is it really Moreau?” _and there are nights in that last year at USC where Jean lies awake and listens to Liam breathing and he finds himself imagining that it’s still Jeremy in the bed across the room. When he can hear Jeremy’s laugh echoing after the rest of the team have stopped laughing and doesn’t even blink at the sight of Liam coming home at 6am with marks up and down his neck because he really doesn’t care.  
  
It not like he never sees Jeremy anymore, the man drops by nearly every other week, it’s like he can’t stay away. And he’s given Jean the key to his new apartment with the instruction to use it as a safe space if the team are getting too much and Liam’s in their dorm. But the distance between them in that year does something to their relationship, almost like something crystallises for Jean, something that he either hadn’t been able to comprehend or had been denying to himself since he had returned to the Trojans after that first Christmas.

It takes another two years for Jean’s realisation to come to fruition and when it does he’s not sure he believes it’s real for the first week.

* * *

“It’s sounds so stupid now I explain it to you,” Jeremy laughs tucking his face into his own elbow, where its propped on the back of their sofa “but at the time it seemed like the easiest solution, I was trying so hard not to push any of what I was feeling on to you, you didn’t need to hav’t’a deal with that shit.”

Jean watches the blush colour the tips of Jeremy’s ears and has the urge to touch it, he can do that now, he reminds himself and so he does, Jeremy raises his head again at the touch and beams at him.

“So all those dates, all those guys, were to distract you?” Jean murmurs feeling his own mouth curl into a crooked smile. Jeremy nods and lets out a soft laugh, “Merde Jeremy, you have no idea how jealous I was without even realising it, it was all I could think about after you graduated.”

Jeremy’s smile gets impossibly bigger as he leans his head into Jeans hand were his fingers still brushed the tip of his ear, “Nothing to be jealous of anymore. I’m all yours Frenchie.” Jean curls his fingers into Jeremy’s hair and hums happily  
“I like the sound of that sunshine boy.”


End file.
